Elegon 10N - Strat or player issues?

Thank you in advance for the invaluable advice the community is about to provide

My Raid composition is as follows: Tanks: Feral Druid, Prot Warrior Healers: Holy Pally, Resto Druid, Disc Priest (we go back and forth between deciding which one of the disc priest or resto druid will go dps and we two heal it)
DPS: Combat rogue, ret pally, hunter, spriest, frost mage. Our most successful attempt to date has been 58%. We also seem to have issues getting the pillars down around the same time in spite of numerous adjustments with regard to match ups.

1) Atm, we have the warrior usually holding the protector and the rogue, ret pally and hunter on the boss as much as possible while the spriest and mage focus primarily on the protectors that spawn. There seem to be at least 4-5 pulses in some instances by the protector before it dies; is this the norm as it seems rather high to me. Ideally who should be allocated to the protectors more and who on the boss more?

2) Our raid leader insists that we go for 5 orbs during the relevant phase; 4 orbs seems to be the highest point where we've had success with all orbs going down (one or two ppl struggling but managing it). The rationale is that a 5 orb debuff is necessary in order to burn the boss as required. Again; I was wondering if we would be better served just going with 4 orbs and spending more time on the boss and letting the 5th orbs hit?

3) All other things being equal (gear and ability) would it be better to have the disc priest OR the resto druid going dos?

Once again; thank you for your time and input; it is highly appreciated.

Figure out which healer is going dps and stick with it, flipping around is lost time because someone has to get used to something that everyone else is already comfortable with. Also our mage is switch from frost to fire before we down this boss.

1)Your tanks should be swapping who is holding the protector each time it spawns so they have a way to drop their stacks. I'd also recommend making your melee switch to the protector so that they can dps it down and drop their stacks at the same time. Otherwise they are just running to the edge of the platform to drop stacks and its a dps loss. I've never really counted the pulses.

2)Does he want you to KILL 5 orbs so that you get 6 STACKS on the boss? or does he want you to KILL 4 orbs so you can get 5 stacks on the boss. My raid kills 4 so we can get 5 stacks and during the 5th channel we dps the boss and just let all the sparks go through. If one spark gets through, then however long your dps where hitting the sparks for is time loss that they could have been on the boss. Find a number and stick to it. Don't try and push for an extra cause you could be screwing yourself.

3)All things are never perfectly equal. One of them is better at something, so put them in the role that is more beneficial to the raid. If healing is tight, have the better healer stay heals. If DPS is lacking, have the better dps'er go dps.

Edit:

Since you are having trouble with the pillar phase adds here are some tips we used. You want the pillars to drop down at almost the exact same moment, this will push through to the next phase faster and get less adds to spawn. The way my group accomplishes this is we kill the pillars from the back(behind elegon) to the front(console). Stick one dps on the pillars closest to the console and have the other two on each side start working their way to the console. This keeps the boss from having the damage and haste increase until the last possible moment. Then you can dps down each side, and run them to the middle to AoE them down. DO NOT Root the adds, cause they will punch whoever is closest in the face.

Thank you very much for the feedback thus far everyone; it has already given much food for thought

Some responses/updates:
1) The disc priest does higher dps so I think I'll request for her to go dps.
2) Atm for the pillar phase we have a single dps allocated to each pillar and they work in a back to front fashion. Is what you're suggesting is to have the 2 evenly divided groups work on one pillar at a time and go from back to front? (leaving out 1 dps each to work on the front most pillar alone)
3) the raid leader's intent was to have 6 stacks of the buff as he thinks we are low on dps; i'll be sure to log the numbers next raid to provide more specifics
Thank you very very much once again ! If it helps the order of our dps is as follows: from highest to lowest: Combat rogue=hunter, ret pally, spriest, mage.

Both sides kill the back pillar, but the front pillar that it is linked to on either side is still up so elegon receives no buff. Then we move to the middle pillar and generally kill it with in 1 or 2 seconds of the other side. the middle pillar recedes into the ground. By this time the solo dps has either killed the front pillar or is very close so we finish it off and the last 4 pillars recede into the ground within 5 seconds( Plus there is an achievement for doing it under 10sec). Now everyone can focus on killing off the adds before the floor pops.

Group 1 dps = Combat rogue, Spriest, and Mage on one side, leaving the mage on the front pillar though I still think he should switch to Fire.
Group 2 dps = Hunter, ret, the healer you switch to dps, leaving the healer/dps on the front pillar.

Seems to be some misconception with the stacks. 4 waves of Energy Charge each time equals 10 stacks on boss. Remember when the Energy Charge spawns that is when he gains one stack, not when you kill the Energy Charges. So basicly if you kill them 4 times then ignore the 5th, he gains the 5th stack even if you were to ignore them. Just pointing out for others so they don't think you need to kill 5 waves to get 5 stacks.

We tend to go for 4 adds each phase, so you get 5 stacks per p2 up on the boss.

Unless your disc got much higher dps then the resto I would say go for disc/hpala healing, since both the paladin (denounce) and the disc (atonement) can assist on the sparks in p2, make sure you have your tanks assisting on the person that has the most trouble killing the spark, the healer on the next in line with trouble, also if your hpala is somewhat decent you can have your disc DPS some extra in p1. Other posters pretty much covered your specific questions, the enrage for Elegon is tight, on our first kill we got 2 protectors in the first p1 (prepot) and 3 of them in the 2nd p1. Having a extra add or having it explode when people are moving towards p2 positions is a disaster (the first on the enrage timer, the second on healer mana)

4-5 pulses is definitely a lot of raid damage. We seem to have 1-3 pulses per Protector. It's important that your tanks are awake and know how much DPS is coming into those adds so that they pull them outside of the platform in time. Ideally none of the pulses should happen inside, but it's ok if 1 does.

How many Protectors are you killing before the boss gets to 85%? If you're managing to do it with only 2 adds, that's pretty much a sign that you have the DPS to down the boss with a normal amount of stacks.

Killing 5 waves of orbs, so having 6 stacks on the boss, is overkill and sounds like it's probably a waste of DPS. If you have the kind of burst to be able to down all orbs on that 5th wave then it seems quite likely that you've got the DPS to kill the boss with fewer stacks.

Aim to kill 4 orbs on each phase, so getting 5 stacks, for a total of 10 stacks on the boss. After killing that 4th orb just nuke the boss until the pillars spawn. With 5 and 10 stacks that is a huge amount of "free" DPS time.

On the pillars what we do is have each orb DPS responsible for their own pillar. DPS it low and if it looks like the pillar next to you is struggling, help out. Otherwise just kill yours and hope the group on the other side is moving at the same pace.

Once they are all down, group up at the console and have one of your tanks grab all the adds. Pull them to the platform when it spawns, chuck out a Shockwave or similar, and have the range aoe them down. If they get snared, make sure no one stands near them. Melee can go straight to the boss, just let the range handle them. It can get messy on the second transition with all of the AOE starting, so you probably want to practice that as much as possible.

---------- Post added 2012-11-15 at 05:22 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Nocturnejazz7

If it helps the order of our dps is as follows: from highest to lowest: Combat rogue=hunter, ret pally, spriest, mage.

You might need to have some words with your mage. Unless his gear is truly awful, which is difficult considering how much the first 4 bosses seem to like handing out cloth, he should never be beaten by those classes.

Once they are all down, group up at the console and have one of your tanks grab all the adds. Pull them to the platform when it spawns, chuck out a Shockwave or similar, and have the range aoe them down. If they get snared, make sure no one stands near them. Melee can go straight to the boss, just let the range handle them. It can get messy on the second transition with all of the AOE starting, so you probably want to practice that as much as possible.

JohnnyQuest's advice is dead on. The only thing I would caution against is anyone rooting the ghosts. Stun - yes, Slow - yes, Root - no -- they quickly one shotanyone standing nearby which he mentioned they should stay away but we found NOT rooting them was easier than the stay away req. Just my .02. It's a hard fight. Keep at it. Most guilds killing it the first week were in the 60ish attempt range. (not counting world first elite players blah blah)

Our group found it much better to have the melee on the P1 add since they have to go out to reset anyway (we usually have a feral druid and a ret paladin as our only melee). We only kill 4 orbs on the first cycle (nuke boss during 5th wave) and nuke 3 orbs on the second cycle (nuke boss on 4th wave).

Also make sure your raid stacks up inside the circle as soon as it's up after P3 to AoE down the adds (have everyone stun them as much as possible).

You say you're having trouble with the pillars. I am curious - are people having trouble with the pillars not being targetable for them? This is a bug that we have continually encountered. One or more pillars will simply not appear on one of the DPS's screens, and we'll have to swap who is doing what pillar on the fly. It's very frustrating.

If you end up having your Druid go Boomkin, and let your Priest stay Disc, you will still be able to get a little extra DPS from the Disc Priest using Atonement.

Just remember that if the pillars don't go down at about the same time, you're going to have issues with adds becoming overwhelming. We noticed a drop of 4-6 less adds when we finally got the pillars down at the same time. This ultimately led to our first kill.

Your raid leader isn't wrong about trying to go for 5 orbs during one of the orb phases. Being able to hit 5 orbs on the first orb phase almost ensures that you won't get a second or third add (assuming you are having the issue) on the next P1. This makes the healing requirement much less. But from your description of how much trouble you guys are having on the orb phase, I wonder if you have DPS issues.

We barely got him down the first time. The second time was much smoother, and I think the higher DPS is a large part of that.

The other reason why I recommend the Disc Priest stay Disc is that he or she should have absolutely no mana problems during the fight if she games Rapture. What I mean by this is, the bug that was active during Wrath of the Lich King content, wherein you could get multiple raptures if all bubbles were broken at the same time, is once again active. I have gotten 2-3 Raptures at the same time during this fight by multi-bubbling before Annihilates and the orb phases (for the latter, avoid bubbling melee as they seem to take far more damage from the Orbs than ranged do). If your Priest is wise about this, he or she will effectively have infinite mana until P4.

Thank you everyone for the absolutely wonderful and insightful feedback; its days like this I'm reminded about what keeps me coming back to the game - the community more than anything else. I got a good 2-3 page of notes based on your inputs